Tesla CEO Elon Musk has fulfilled his promise to provide the driving logs from the recent Model S test drive by The New York Times -- and it looks like John Broder has some explaining to do.

Broder, the NYT staff writer that took a Tesla Model S for a test trip up the east coast this winter, published a final article that details a failed trip and the many troubles the car gave him along the way.

However, Musk became suspicious of Broder's claims when so many other journalists had made similar or more tasking trips in the Model S.

"To date, hundreds of journalists have test driven the Model S in every scenario you can imagine," said Musk. "The car has been driven through Death Valley (the hottest place on Earth) in the middle of summer and on a track of pure ice in a Minnesota winter. It has traveled over 600 miles in a day from the snowcapped peaks of Tahoe to Los Angeles, which made the very first use of the Supercharger network, and moreover by no lesser person than another reporter from The New York Times. Yet, somehow John Broder 'discovered' a problem and was unavoidably left stranded on the road. Or was he?"

Musk dug up the driving logs from Broder's trip, and earlier this week, he said he would share these discoveries after claiming that Broder had "faked" his article. Now, Musk has come equipped with the goods and it's not looking good for Broder.

Musk first addressed Broder's claim that the Model S ran completely out of energy and required a flatbed truck to tow it in Connecticut. Musk said the car never, at any time, ran out of energy.

Broder's article also mentioned that the Model S fell short of its projected range "on the final leg" of the trip, which was 61 miles total. On his final charge before embarking on this last leg of 61 miles, the logs show that Broder disconnected the charge cable when the range display showed only 32 miles. However, despite not fully charging the car, it managed to travel 51 miles -- and still wasn't completely out of charge when the flatbed truck was called for a tow. Also, during that last leg of the trip, Broder drive right past another charging station where he could have given the Model S another boost. But Musk said Broder "constructed a no-win scenario for any vehicle, electric or gasoline."

Musk also said that Broder never set the cruise control to 54 MPH or drove at 45 MPH, as stated in the article. Instead, he drove at speeds of 65-81 MPH for a majority of the trip.

He also had the cabin temperature at 72 degrees, and when he mentioned turning it down in the article, he had actually turned it up to 74 degrees.

Musk further noted that Broder's charge time on the second stop was 47 minutes, and not 58 minutes as stated in the article's graphic. If Broder didn't turn off the Supercharger at 47 minutes and went for the full 58, it would have been "virtually impossible" for him to run out of energy so quickly.

Speaking of charging, the driving logs also showed that Broder recharged the car to 90 percent on his first stop, to 72 percent on the second Supercharge and to 28 percent on the last leg -- signficantly cutting charging times at each stop.

Finally, Musk's driving logs from the Model S show that Broder had taken a long detour in Manhattan, and upon reaching Milford, Connecticut (where the range display said 0 miles), he drove the car in circles in a for over a half mile in a tiny parking lot. The Model S wouldn't give in and die, so Broder finally took it to the charging station.

Musk added that Broder was biased against electric vehicles from the start, and had set out to make the Model S fail before even receiving the car.

"When the facts didn’t suit his opinion, he simply changed the facts," said Musk. "Our request of The New York Times is simple and fair: please investigate this article and determine the truth. You are a news organization where that principle is of paramount importance and what is at stake for sustainable transport is simply too important to the world to ignore."

Broder, who had his article published last week, was given a Model S sedan with an EPA rated 265-mile estimated range with an 85-kilowatt battery pack. He traveled from the Washington area in Maryland to Norwich, Connecticut, with many stops in between including Newark, Delaware; New York City; Milford, Connecticut; Branford, Connecticut and Groton, Connecticut.

During his trip, Broder mentioned many instances where the battery suddenly depleted quickly and he had to call Tesla for assistance on how to maximize range between charging stops (which were about 200 miles apart from one another or less during the trip). He said he received different advice from different Tesla employees, and even bad advice from one that said to sit in the car for half an hour with the heat on a low setting in order to warm the battery after it depleted from an overnight stay in Groton. At one point, Broder said the car even needed to be towed in Branford because the battery drained much sooner than anticipated.

Because it's ancient? Because things are different now, people are different?

quote: when switching from one major form of communications/transportation/etc. that can often take years?

What switch? There's nothing conceptually different between what we have now and EV's. The only difference is how they are powered. This is NOT "horse vs Model A" dude.

I don't think this switch is going to happen until EV's are on par with ICE's anyway. But we'll see. I guess with the Government pumping billions of our dollars into it, it's possible. Sad that's looked at as a good thing.

What I'm saying is that the infrastructure is not there to facilitate the widespread adoption of EVs in the United States... YET! It took years for the infrastructure to be in place to make gasoline engine vehicles practical in the United States.

Sure, you can charge your EV at home and drive around town for a bit, but there's not a charging station on every street corner like there are gas stations. You can't simply hop in your electric car without a care in the world and drive anywhere in the United States, anytime you want.

When you can pull up to a station and "quick charge" your battery in less than 10 minutes, then you'll see EVs take off.

quote: It took years for the infrastructure to be in place to make gasoline engine vehicles practical in the United States.

Key difference though, oil/gasoline created an industrial and economic boom. So people were highly incentivized to make it happen because it was extremely profitable to do so. Look at all the millionaires/billionaires this has created over our history.

Back to EV's, where's the profit motive? Where is the incentive to make this happen? Besides Government bailouts/handouts that is.

quote: When you can pull up to a station and "quick charge" your battery in less than 10 minutes, then you'll see EVs take off.

I'm sure you mean that as the figurative "you". Because we'll be dead long before this is a reality. Certainly not before trillions of dollars we don't have is spent upgrading the grid.

I guess I'm just depressed Brandon. The country is lost, make no mistake, we're going down. It's just a little hard to daydream about this kind of pie in the sky stuff when the capitalist based economy needed to make this a reality is being destroyed.

quote: Key difference though, oil/gasoline created an industrial and economic boom. So people were highly incentivized to make it happen because it was extremely profitable to do so. Look at all the millionaires/billionaires this has created over our history.

Ahh, I see where you're going and I agree.

However, as an end game, I see electric vehicles or fuel cells/hydrogen being a more efficient and way of propulsion than fossil fuels. That's why I see it as promising technology that actually excites me.

Plus some of us are tired of being pivot men to oil companies. I don't know about some of you but I am getting sore.

Gasoline engines and the infrastructure to support them didn't just spurt out of the ground along with the oil. Like Brandon said these things take time. Progress is being made everyday.

Half the problem is companies (probably high dollar political supporters) who are getting these unsupervised big contracts. The other half of the problem is the gov forcing the issue of corn ethanol (also big dollar supporters)and other similar scenarios. However, the research should still be funded as it will be crucial down the road.

quote: Plus some of us are tired of being pivot men to oil companies. I don't know about some of you but I am getting sore.

You can't beat the man and there is no free lunch. You'll just be a pivot man for the electric industry. What's the essential difference? You'll swap 'masters' so to speak, but nothing will change for you.

Oh and if that bountiful EV future does happen? What do you think happens once the Government realizes it's losing craptons of tax revenue? They'll start taxing the shi#t out of electricity and EV's.

I promise Bandon I'm not ignoring you. But you guys REALLY need to fix your goddamn spam filter. No matter how I edit or cut down my reply, I get "This comment is apparently spam and we do not allow spam comments."

quote: And if it was your price to pay, I would agree. I don't care if someone buys and EV. I don't care if it works for them or not.

Reclaimer, I agree with this to a point. But I don't see why we all give the oil companies a free pass on this point. We pay a lot more money to defend Middle East shipping lanes and oil pipelines than we do on any incentives for EVs.So there have been somewhere in the neighborhood of ~40,000 EVs sold under that $7,500 tax break. That's $300 million which seems like a lot of money until you realize it wouldn't float a task force in the Persian Gulf for a month or pay for military bases we have to guard pipelines or even build them.I just don't get why we give oil a pass and don't seem to mind spending $Trillions on that?An example: http://www.globalresearch.ca/its-not-just-the-oil-...

The oil companies given a free pass? The oil companies are the biggest thing keeping our Government afloat. They pay hundreds of billions combined in taxes. And the people of this country pay even more in fuel taxes on petroleum products. If it wasn't for these revenues, our Government actually WOULD be collapsed at this point.

Sure there are fuel subsidies. And I'm against those too. But make no mistake, they totally pale in comparison to the revenues generated!

Now when you can say the same about EV's, I'll gladly shut up about this. Have we gotten ANYTHING back? Will we?

As far as your link, what is this, 2004? The "War for resources" nonsense is just that. Nonsense. We haven't taken or "secured" one red cent of that oil. In fact the oil from the region we did help sell, 100% of the profits went to rebuilding Iraq. We import more oil from Canada or South America than the entire Middle East anyway.

As far as why we went to Libya, well I still don't know or understand that one. But Obama and his supporters tell me to shut up, and it barely cost us any money anyway. /shrug

You don't think it cost us a good chunk of our military budget to keep a huge presence in the middle east? The amount we get from there vs. Canada or Mexico is not important. We are still dependent on the oil we get from the region so we have to spend a fortune keeping it "secure".

Yes, they pay hundreds of billions in taxes (in years where they don't play games with the accounting) but they suck that much back out of our economy. We have $300-$400Billion worth of a trade deficit because of that oil on top of the military spending.

Look, don't get me wrong...I love oil. It's the only reason America became a world power to start with and allowed us to build our industry and our way of life. And it's not going anywhere for another 100-200 years. But the less we need, the better our economy is now.

I don't remember having to send troops to Winnipeg recently to keep anyone in line. I don't remember having to send troops to Hoover Dam to keep electricity flowing or to North Dakota for the oil and natural gas there.

Unfortunately, oil is a world commodity. As long as ANYONE needs it from the middle east, we all pay a higher price. Because if their supply is disrupted then we end up bidding against the rest of the world for the Canadian oil...or even the American oil! Free markets are great, but as you said, there is no free lunch. They can sell that oil anywhere they want and we have to bid for it.

On the EV front, yes, we're going to "pay the man", but at least the "man" is an American source for our NG, coal, hydro and nuclear. That money stays in our economy. So I'm not ranting against oil per say, just trying to minimize our dependence on it.

And the sooner we get out of the middle east, the sooner the asswipe muslim fundamentalist find someone else to hate (and they will always hate SOMEONE cause it distracts from their own stupid bullshit). And face it, we don't spend anytime running around sub-Saharan Africa and ignore genocides there because they don't have shit we want. But we do send them a "Get well soon card" now that Obama's in office. LOL

Sorry but you're being fed a bunch of Liberal lies. It's a well established belief we're in the Middle East to "secure" oil. It's also a crock.

Every time we "invade" the Middle East, the supply of oil is put in jeopardy as the region destabilizes. Not to mention the price increases. We don't gain ANYTHING by fighting there. Hell look at the first Gulf War, something like 6 million barrels of oil, per day, were burned up! Oh yeah, great way to secure that oil right!?

Secondly this whole "dependent" on oil some anti-Capitalist came up with. You sound like a really smart guy, but you're being manipulated. We're no more "dependent" on oil than, say, water. Or the ore in the ground we turn into metals. It's a resource that we use because it's the best, cheapest, and most profitable one for the job at hand.

If I tried to ban electricity because we were too "dependent" on it, I would be labeled a loon. And rightly so. But for some reason, because Liberals and environmentalists have worked for years to make this argument more acceptable, people think it's fine to say we're "dependent" on oil. And that's automatically a bad thing. And a reason to limit it's use. Which is just as crazy if you think about it.

Thanks for the link and the discussion. I'm really trying to think this through and decide which side of the issue I'm on.

I think we're confusing the cause and the effect though if we look at the Kuwait oil fires and their effect on price. The week before the Iraqi invasion, oil was at $18/barrel and immediately jumped to 23.20 afterwards. (I know, what quaint little numbers by today's standards LOL). But that's a 29% increase before we ever got involved.It is the threat of issues like this causing a disruption to oil supplies that I believe keeps us in the region and flexing our muscles to make everyone behave...as well as the morons can.I think that is the reason why we have such a strong presence in the region and I can't find any other. We don't have a huge presence like that anywhere else in the world. Anyway, I can't think of any other reason for us to be over there in such force, but I'm willing to find out there is a different reason.

I'm far from a liberal in truth. I'm licensed to carry concealed in a couple of states, come from a military family, I have never voted for a Democrat for President, and many other things. Drones? Let's triple the number next week and kill ten times as many assholes that need it.But I'm also for gay rights (why discriminate, they aren't asking me to do anything), I like a clean environment and I don't like us buying lots of oil. If there are cleaner ways to get energy, then that's great. but the main reason I don't like it is because I think it does harm to our economy. If it can let me stop breathing exhaust fumes, then great. But even as a geek who like to tinker with electric cars, they are many years away from being mainstream. Many.Not all of us easily classify as either conservative or liberal.

Okay so Rant on - What kind of people take a 'road trip' for in upwards of 550 miles? Most people I know road trip for 75 to 150 miles out of town. This guy took a short ' vacation' according to the miles he took. And plenty of people stop to sleep .. look at sights etc. which you can do while our vehicle charges. I just found it upsetting that you Brandon instead of telling that guy how dumb his comment was about it being a ' simple roadtrip ' .. it that it wasnt.. 500+ miles is a long damn way to go. /Rant off

It was specified AHEAD of time. If you don't like the stats that's fine, but no one is lying to you about the technology limitations. For 47mins, he can go grab a coffee, have lunch and rest a bit. That's normally how long people take time off between stops on a road trip.

Not everyone is 18years old driving 30hrs non-stop across the country.

If you are deliberating trying to sabotage the review, I guess you can just not charge the car, and go drive it at 130mph and turn up the heat to max. But no one really cares about your review.

The purpose of a review is to follow the recommendations from the manufacturer, and if the restrictions is deemed too great, say it in the review. Document all the shortcoming that you believe is a unreasonable compromise, but you cannot lying/slander the product by misrepresenting what actually took place.